Chargen: Beginnings

From Cuendillar MUSH Wiki

Contents

General Overview

Your character is important to you, and forms the foundation of your role-play experience on Cuendillar. We recommend that you spend some time getting familiar with your character and reading about the system before you use it.

Play the Game

We strongly recommend that you play on Cuendillar for at least one month before going through character generation, so that you have time to develop a good idea of who your character is.

Know Your Character

The following is a list of character aspects you'll want to have some ideas about before you go through chargen.

A person's experiences during his/her formative years has a big impact on the person she/he becomes. When going through the Cuendillar chargen system, we consider the "formative years" to be the ages between 5 and 15 or so.

Which culture did your character grow up a part of? The culture he lived in is more important than the culture he was born to, if the two are different.

What was her family life like? Was her family loving and supportive? Is she an orphan? Did she have lots of brothers and sisters, or was she an only child? What did her parents do for a living? Were there people other than her family who were important to her in the early years?

What was the socio-economic status of your character's family or the people he grew up with? Were they barely scraping by? Did they live in the lap of luxury? Did he have to work all the time to help his family, or did he have time to spend studying a trade or field of knowledge?

What is your character like physically? Is she unusually short or tall? Is she strong, but perhaps not very agile? Is she quick on her feet? Does she have strong senses (vision, hearing)? Does she have any unusual physical attributes like a missing limb or a prominent scar?

Are there any unusual positive or negative traits to your character? Does he have an unusual ability? Does he have something to hide in his past? Is he a victim of a phobia or a disease? Is he exceptionally lucky? Does he have a family heirloom that might even be a ter'angreal?

How old is your character? The chargen system is designed for characters of 15 or older for humans, and 50 or older for Ogier (roughly equivalent to a human age of 10). Health care is better in the Wheel of Time world than the equivalent Earth period, so most people live to at least 65. Since characters are played for some time after they go through chargen, and game time is accelerated, the system won't let you create a character older than 75 without admin approval, or unless you're an Ogier or a female Channeler.

What did your character do and learn before you started playing her? Did she work on a farm or in the family trade? Did she have the opportunity to study with a scholar? What about her hobbies? Maybe she spent all her time training her pet dog, or loved to cook.

A Note About Combat

The existence of a combat system on Cuendillar might suggest that a character must be adept in combat to survive the game. This isn't true. Your character does not need ANY combat skills to survive play on Cuendillar.

Combat is a part of the game, but it is not the only or main element of role- play. Most role-play happens in large cities, which have laws and guards. Just as in our world, most citizens of the Wheel of Time do not have combat training, and they sensibly avoid insulting armed men or visits to the Blight.

Characters generally do not die unless their players want them to, even if they lose combat. The only exception to this is if a character is set non-consent, whereby they already agree to allow their character to die if a situation is unfavorable for them. For the large majority of players, if you use the coded combat system and lose, your character is rendered unconscious, not dead, and you and the other participants work together to come to an agreement about what happens next. (There are a few exceptions to this, all centered around the idea that you must take responsibility for your character's actions. For instance, if your character proved guilty of a crime punishable by death, s/he can be executed.)

In short, DO NOT take any combat Skills unless they fit your character concept. You are more than welcome to play a warrior, but you are also free to play a merchant, Noble, child or a pacifistic Tinker without having to live in fear of dying because your character doesn't have combat Skills.

Cheating the System

Some people select elements in a character generation system with an eye to maximizing game benefits and minimizing game penalties, rather than using it to design a well-rounded and realistic character. There is no point in trying to do this on Cuendillar.

The elements of character generation do not come into daily use during game play for most people. Chargen is used to:

Define a character in your mind.

Determine who can do what and ensure the game is populated by balanced characters who aren't good or bad at everything.

Resolve conflict situations if players can't come to agreement.

Enhance coded commands.

The main aspect of game play is role-playing - portraying your character and interacting with other people. Attempting to cheat the system will gain you minimal benefits at best, and will have no effect on how people view you or your role-play.

The system has been designed to minimize cheating. The final stage of character generation is the approval of the background you write for your character. If your character has a mishmash of system elements that don't fit a coherent character, s/he won't be approved, and you will have to make modifications before the character will be approved.